129. Travelers

Previous - 128. Well, Everything Is Well

Link to Table of Contents

Vertigo

P53 ...when I am travelling I often feel as Grillparzer did on his journeys. Nothing pleases me, any more than it did him; the sights I find infinitely disappointing, one and all; and I sometimes think that I would have done far better to stay at home with my maps and timetables...

Now I'm thinking of Sebald not in the tradition of novelist but in the tradition of travel writers. He's not Bill Bryson. Bryson has referenced Paul Theroux in the past, but it's been too long since I've read Theroux to recall his style. 

Sebald curtailed his 1980 trip after he had a vaguely unsettling experience in a deserted Verona restaurant. Seven years later he is attempting to repeat and complete his trip but is transfixed by the view of Verona from the train and can't get off, and so continues on to Limone. 

(The young woman sitting next to me at this counter -- having a meeting with another woman sitting next to her -- has a magnificent mane of hair which she habitually flips back so that it hits me. I can't identify her accent.)

Bryson doesn't always end up where he intends, and sometimes changes his plans due to, for example, the birth of a grandchild. But it's hard to imagine him being chased from Europe by a thoughtless restaurant proprietor, or being so transfixed by contemplating something that he misses his stop. 

Who does Sebald remind me of? Mary Elliott from Persuasion? Marianne Dashwood (in the novel version of Sense and Sensibility)? Cousin Charlotte from Room With a View? Not sure.

P57 I hadn’t noticed before that Casanova’s confinement in Venice overlapped with the Lisbon earthquake that was so shocking to Voltaire. The account here gives no indication of why Casanova was detained, but his situation seems to me to be of more moral interest than the earthquake. 

At least twice in this volume, our narrator "sees" a historical figure during the course of his travels. He recently saw King Ludwig II of Bavaria in Venice, and near the end he sees some queen (Elizabeth, the Winter Queen) on a train on his way home to England. This is pushing the unreliable narrator idea rather far.

Candide

"Voltaire at Les Delices and at Ferney" - Gustave Lanson

p98 On the propaganda that flowed out of Voltaire's estate at Ferney ...These "little pot-pies," these portable scandal-sheets easy to read, and continuously exciting, came out of the factory at Ferney for twenty-three years; they emerged in all forms, on all subjects, in verse, in prose, dictionaries, stories, tragedies, diatribes, extracts on history, literature metaphysics, religion, the sciences politics legislation, Moses, snails, Shakespeare, and notes written by a gentleman... they became nothing more for him than a means to an end. Tragedies and verses served to hasten the spread of his ideas.

He repeated himself, he went over the same ground again and again... For he knew that ideas enter the public mind only by dint of repetition. But the seasoning must be varied, to prevent disgust; and at that art he was a past master.

He has all the qualities, with many of the faults, of the journalist...

This passage caught my eye because, just today, I commented to one of the teachers of science I follow on YouTube that nothing was more important to teaching difficult subjects (quantum mechanics, for example) than repetition. I even used a painting analogy... you need to brush or roll multiple times from a variety of angles before you can finally cover the surface. 

Also, wasn't Voltaire trying to create, hundreds of years in advance, what can be done so easily today with Twitter and social media in general? He was propagating facts "alternative" to those of the Church -- both in Rome but also in Geneva. Breitbart can be viewed as trying to undo his Enlightenment using the latest version of the very tools he mastered. 


"Gestation: Candide Assembling Itself" - Hayden Mason

Reading page 100 got me interested in the history of Portugal during Voltaire's life and I ran into the very interesting account of the life of Sebastião de Melo (Count of Oeiras after 1759.) He's certainly a mixed bag. On the one hand he seems to be almost a puppet of Voltaire, and yet also an autocrat. Now I'm curious what Voltaire had to say about him.

p100 ...He tells Elie Bertrand (another of the Genevan clergy)... that the myth of the Fall of Man... is more reasonable in human terms than the Optimism of Leibniz and Pope, which beneath the disguise of a consoling name simply removes all hope: 'if all is well, how do the Leibnizians admit of a better?'... It is the fatalistic quality of Optimism that is so cruel, for it invites man to acquiesce and therefore give up all striving for improvement... To Thieriot he makes a touching confession that he is writing about the sufferings of his fellow-men out of pure altruism, for 'I am so happy that I am ashamed of it' (D6875, 27 May {1756}).

I admit that it is something of a problem, if you believe in God, that life can smash you like a bug at any time. And not just you but entire ant hills of people, like Lisbon. But then again, from a devoutly religious position This Life if nothing special in any case. The victims of Lisbon just meet their maker a little quicker and in a large party.

In part of that paragraph I didn't quote, Mason shows that Voltaire quickly moved from Lisbon to the greater evil of war. (I was going to say that the 18th century was a good time to consider war, but then what century isn't?) So Voltaire quickly returns to the evil in man, where I think his opposition to the Optimists is on a surer footing.

p105 Pennsylvania is the model for Eldorado?!

p108 Unless Candide were virtually finished before Voltaire's visit to Schwetzingen, which appears unlikely, one must view it as written not simply in a state of ambivalent feelings about Paris and Geneva nor as a work of detached irony by a happy man but as a composition of someone who was once more plunged into despairing gloom. When he returned to Geneva he received definitive news from d'Argental that Mme. de Pompadour had declared him persona non grata at Court. Besterman rightly notes: 'it is from this moment that can be dated his spiritual severance from his fatherland'...

p109 ...Voltaire is disheartened by the decline of French prestige and influence in the world. Concern is often expressed about cultural and military affairs together... since the battle of Rossbach 'everything has been in decline in our armies, as in the fine arts in Paris'... The philosophe has long been persuaded that belles-lettre in France were degenerating and that the French were living on past credit...

...He has taken a new decision, to renounce urban life... [after buying his estates at Tournay and Ferney] 'I do not know of any situation preferable to mine'... and that he can now cultivate his garden in tranquility.... 

Finally

After over a month -- and almost a week longer than I can quite justify -- I returned to the gym today. I expect to be sore tomorrow, even though I reduced all my weights. Early on, I heard someone coughing and was happy I waited until I was completely over my illness, but then I found myself struggling with even some reduced weights and wished I had come back a bit sooner. I have my work cut out for me to get in shape by mid-April. The problem now is the weather which continues to be colder than normal (though not today) and there is still more rain forecast.

Next - 130. Proust Was a Neuroscientist

104. Goethe in Derbyshire

Previous - 103. Best laid plans

Link to Table of Contents

Little Dribbling

Why aren't there photographs in this book? Even a few photos would make the reading experience so much better. I've been driven to Google Image and Map to see the places and some of the things Bryson talks about. The problem with this is that, seeing the areas for myself, I have to go on to be critical of things he fails to mention or emphasize. 

He gave the impression that the bizarre English holiday traditions at Skegness were mostly a thing of the past, but viewing the area from above, there seems to be an amazing expanse of camps still around. And some of them really do look like concentration camps.

He gave the impression that the port of Grimsby was pretty derelict, but that's just the fishing port. Next door is a very active port that appears to mostly deal with transporting cars. The other interesting thing about this port -- also Hull and Liverpool -- is that, because the rivers are not always navigable due to the tides, the actual port facilities are separated from the rivers by locks. 


When I bought myself this book for Christmas I never expected to write anything about it. I read Bryson for laughs -- that's not entirely true, since he's written a number of books like At Home and A Short History of Nearly Everything that are content rich -- but after making the notes above I hit a patch about the Peak District -- which makes me think of Pride and Prejudice, of course -- which I have to both quote and comment on. It never ends!

p272 About the Headstone Viaduct on the Monsal Trail which crosses, or rather tunnels and trenches it's way across, the Monsal Dale. ...When the viaduct was built in 1863, the art critic John Ruskin [especially here] famously raged against it, saying that a setting of tranquility and beauty had been cruelly sacrificed just so that "every fool in Buxton can be in Bakewell in half an hour and every fool at Bakewell in Buxton." Headstone Viaduct is often used as an example of how things that are hated when new later become treasured. Well, sure, that sometimes happens. But there is a difference here in that the Headstone Viaduct was from the start a thing of actual beauty, carefully built, which is rarely the case with intrusions on the landscape today.

As fond as I am of 19th century infrastructure, I'm sure I would love the walk along this old railroad right of way as much as Bryson did. But, again, I'm looking at the scene from Google Map and I have to sympathize with my old pal Ruskin here. The non-map view (satellite? aerial photo? whatever) is particularly fine of the Monsal Dale and it looks to be a lovely place to walk across, as one can imagine Elizabeth Bennett doing with her aunt and uncle in Austen's novel. That is until you come to the trench dug for the railroad. The viaduct itself, and the tunnel at one end of the viaduct, are almost beside the point. The problem is that trench running across the landscape as though a huge boar had been running loose. 

This is a prime example of a landscape where, for thousands of years you could wander at random until the 19th century when you were suddenly forced to find the few places where you could cross either over or under the tracks. Even now that it is just a walking trail and there is no danger of being run down by a steam engine, the barrier exists in the same way. And even Ruskin (probably) didn't consider the environmental side effects of dividing communities of wild animals by this arbitrary line. 

(It's worth noting that some of Ruskin's design ideas even apply to software interface design. I've considered his views, and sometimes gone against them -- with reservations -- more than once when designing software.)

But it doesn't stop there, Not far from Monsal Dale is a view nearly as good as, and even more historic than, the one that so exercised Ruskin, where the trail emerges from a long tunnel into a green valley. Holding a commanding position at the valley head is a white Georgian building that looks at first sight like a stately home. In fact, it is Cressbrook Mill, built by Richard Arkwright in 1779... to spin cotton. It is quite the most handsome factory you will ever see and possibly the most important, for it changed the world. Along with Cromford Mill, built a few miles away near Matlock, this was where the factory system started. Everything that is manufactured on Earth today traces its beginnings back to this tranquil corner of Derbyshire. Arkwright built his mills in the narrow valleys of Derbyshire because they had plenty of water to power his machines and because the remote location made it less likely that they would be besieged by angry spinners put out of work by his new methods. It also made it easier for him to exploit his workers. Cressbrook Mill was operated mostly by orphans who were treated worse than abysmally.

p273 Within half a century, the cotton industry employed over four hundred thousand people. Nearly everything that followed and made Britain great -- shipbuilding, finance, the building of canals and railroads, the growth of empire -- had its foundations here... Derbyshire's spell at the center of all this didn't last terribly long. As the cotton industry grew, larger factories and bigger rivers were required, and the work moved to more urban places like Manchester and Bradford. Derbyshire sank back into a picturesque oblivion. Today Cressbrook Mill is upmarket apartments."

Never-mind Ruskin, now I'm imagining Goethe here. (The Goethe of the last sections of Faust, the Developer sections.) Not reclaiming land and engaging in piracy, unless you interpret piracy to include the vicious exploitation of labor -- either "free" as here or slave as in Absalom, both are contemporary with Cressbrook Mill. The slaves producing the cotton to be spun by the orphans. 


When I first mentioned P&P it was because that's the first thing I think of when I hear the words "Peak District," but that association turns out to be prescient. On a hunch, I just did a quick Google search and learned two things: 1. There's a Wiki entry for "Pemberley," and 2. The fictional Pemberley was set in the vicinity of Bakewell -- also, like Cromford, near Matlock. I would love to know if Austen picked this neighborhood because it's romantically scenic or because it was coming to be associated with the new wealth of the Industrial Revolution. (Not easy to determine the source of the wealth of the Dukes of Devonshire. Seems to be something one doesn't speak of. Rents, I suppose?)

So Ruskin, Goethe, Austen, and Bryson -- I should have had them walking into a pub. 

Next - 105. Tower of Power